Winter Harbor

One woman in particular struck a chord with me with her comments.

"David, your article really tugged on my heart. I had a great, wonderful relationship for several years and I allowed myself to take him for granted. As a result I ended up driving him away when I had an affair with a co-worker. I never intended to let that happen but it did and when he left me there was such a void in my life that I tried to fill it with the co-worker to little avail. When it all blew up I didn't know if I actually loved the man I was having an affair with or not; I was so completely confused and turned around. Later I realized he was just manipulating me for sex and the result was I lost my husband and my self-respect. I have not attempted to enter into any kind of relationship with anybody since he left and I really do not want to. It even affects my relationship with my parents who never had any respect for my husband. Now I'm estranged from them for defending the integrity of the man I so disrespected. In any event, thank you for a wonderful article and please keep writing. I will read every one of them. - VO"

Her screen name was 'Vanished One' and her comments went right to my heart. I couldn't get it out of my head and finally I sat down and wrote a response to her.

"VO, thank you for your comments. I can relate to everything you said. I wish the same could have been said in my case but my Ex moved on with a new relationship and witnessing that made me do what I did which was to physically move on and come back to Maine as I mentioned in my story. For me there is no going back because whatever void there is, as you phrased it, has already been filled by another man in her case. That said, if you still love your ex-husband and he hasn't remarried or is in a serious relationship, maybe you could still reach out to him, at the very least to bring some kind of closure and acknowledgement between the two of you. That is the one thing I never had, closure, a real conclusion and that is a sore spot to this day. - David"

After I posted it I realized that somebody is going to think I'm the new Dear Abby or something when in fact I'm the last thing from it. That didn't happen but I did get into a continuing email correspondence with 'Vanished One'. She gave me her email address and I responded with my private mail account and over the next several months we corresponded and became 'internet friends'. I kept everything within the 'writer's realm' and never asked for personal information like her real name or where she lived. She said she was a southern girl along with 50 million others. That was good enough for me.

She did tell me she was following my advice and trying to make amends with her Ex but it was too early to tell if things would turn out OK for them but she would keep me appraised of their efforts. That made me feel really good about some of what I was doing if just one couple could find a peaceful exit from the angst.

In the meantime, Heidi continued to fuck me senseless at times. We had a great rhythm together and came to know the other's body and needs almost perfectly. I couldn't have asked for better sex and a better friend to have at this point in my life. We both knew, or so we thought anyways, that that was all it was, FWB. We had dinner together once in a while. We were a regular fixture at the Tavern and we would spend the night once a week or so at one or the other's house. It was a good life.

Life living Downeast stayed good even during the down times which really were not often. One of those downtimes came when I picked up my daily mail at the Post Office one morning and in the bundle of letters, flyers and junk was a personal letter from an old Mt Pleasant address. I didn't have to guess who it was from. I had mailed enough letters from the same address to know whose thoughts and words it contained.

I allowed the robin's egg blue envelop to sit on the window shelf in my kitchen for several days while I pondered it and debated running a silver letter opener through one end to free its contents. It must have set in my hands a hundred times before I sat at the kitchen table and opened the glued seal and flap on the back side. Even then I could barely open the folded pages of her hand written letter. Once I did, I began to read ...

"Dear David,

"It feels like a lifetime has passed between us since I last spoke or wrote to you about anything; three years, nine months, three days to be exact since we sat together in that park for lunch that terrible day. I think I've counted every one of those days. I've wanted to write this letter nearly every day since you left town and moved back to Maine but I didn't know how to do it.

"I know I did you wrong in the worse way a woman can do her man and to this day I have no words that can properly express my sorrow and profound regret for the sheer stupidity I unleashed upon us. Every single day I ask myself in the mirror why and how I could have done what I did and every answer is always the same; I am a fool in the truest sense of the word.

"I owe you the truth and answers for what I did and I hope when all is done you will forgive me. That would allow me to live with myself in whatever solitude I can muster in the mess I created. Some things can be put in a letter and some things can only be spoken between two people. I will try my best to account for what I did and why. If you don't want to know, please just throw this away but if you do and you want even the tiniest explanation I will cross whatever sea I need to tell you to your face.

"If I start at the beginning I guess I have to begin with my own selfishness. We were both traveling on business and absorbed in our jobs and after a good bit of it I realized that I took everything you did for me for granted. When you held the door for me it became nothing. When my dinner that you prepared for us was fresh and inviting I consumed it as if I had just opened a fast food sack and gave no appreciation for everything you did to make it happen.

"It sounds trivial but all the little things ignored added up to a big conceited vulnerability. I allowed myself to be at risk to a man with charm who didn't care that I was another man's wife. It started slow with little nice things said at work and then lunch downtown. Yes, it was with a man I worked with. I don't think you ever met him but it would not have mattered.

"His name is Michael and he was masterful and used every trick in whatever book such charmers use. Eventually I gave in to him and betrayed you in a terrible way. At first I was dreadfully guilty and torn by what I had done but after a while it became easier and by the time you discovered my infidelity I was so emotionally invested in him that I thought I might be in love with him too.

"I was a foolish woman, David. The only man I have ever loved has been you. I continued seeing Michael intermittently after you left me but there was no emotional feeling toward him at that point. About three months after you left I stopped seeing him intimately although he continued trying to keep a relationship going. I ended it all for good one morning at the Battery. He tried to continue it. He sat with me at the park where you and I used to go a lot and poured on the charm but all I could see or feel was what we used to experience with each other in our happy days.

"A couple weeks later I tried looking you up at your apartment but you were gone and when I called your office, they told me you had resigned and moved back to Maine somewhere. I knew I had no right to any expectations but I think that day was the full realization of the enormity of what I had caused. I resigned from the firm to avoid being around Michael and to bring myself to a place that I could live with.

"I took a job with a non-profit child adoption center and I've poured myself into it for the past three years. Daddy was pissed off as expected but he got over it. I know you and he didn't get along well and to be honest I don't see him much at all any more. I tired of hearing him run you into the ground every time he told me I needed to file for a divorce.

"Yeah, we are still married, David. I never filed the papers. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I cry every time I think about it. However, I'm a big girl and I know I have to pay the price for what I did. I'm not going to file the papers, David, unless you ask me to so that you can marry a new love if you haven't already. If you have, please let me know and I will do anything to get it done.

"I guess I'm at the point where I'm hoping we could sit down together and share a coffee or something and see if we can at least be friends. I promised myself I would never interfere in your life at all and if that would be interfering then I will sadly let it go. If you think you can forgive me for the terrible things I have done I would cherish the idea of talking to you again or even just writing to each other on occasion. I can only leave it in your hands, David.

"I will love you always,

"Kari Higgins"

The old wound opened up as I read the letter and afterwards. It wasn't the pain of my earlier experience. Instead it was the sorrow inflicted by the enormity of what was wrecked and battered on the emotional shoreline of what had been my marriage. The ignorant hippies used to be fond of telling others that they were trying to 'find themselves' when they were really just ignoring their consciences. Most of them eventually found their way back to a more sure footing in life.

Kari had been trying to 'find herself' through lust with another man; well, it was lust as far as the man was concerned; perhaps confusion and terrible emotional entanglement on her part. The journey cost us our marriage at the end of it.

Yet the wound was again fresh and all the 'what-ifs' were opened up to mull over again. Her letter was revealing for me in only a way that Kari would know. She had loved her job, really loved it, and for her to walk away from it like that had to affect her deeply.

The question I had to address for myself was whether I could bring myself to respond to her invitation or even more unsettling, did I even care anymore?

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The rose breasted swallows let out for the coast from the peak eaves of the barn and I stood naked under the cool shower just outside the barn door. It's never really hot here with temps barely ever reaching 90 degrees. With low humidity and a near constant breeze coming up from the shoreline it is the perfect climate.

I had stopped mowing grass around the house except for a few small patches tended to with a manual push mower. In place of the lawn were patches of wild flowers and plantings mixed with bean vines and various squashes and other assorted vegetables. Heidi had set up an easel earlier that morning to capture the beauty of the setting. I guess I didn't realize she wanted my nude form in the primitive shower to be part of the landscape in her painting.

"Perfect!" She exclaimed and jumped up out of her chair from the midst of the tall timothy grass around her.

She stood there in her own nude perfection admiring her handiwork. She had been working on it for the past several days, always in the same spot and always nude; quirky for certain but erotic from my perspective.

The plantings and growth I had nourished created a delightful meadow around and behind the house which itself was set back from the country road out front affording a great deal of privacy. Because of it Heidi had let her nudist inclinations express herself without any sense of modesty, not that there was a need with just the two of us there.

I wasn't as inclined and to tell you the truth it always gave me cause to walk around with a hard-on if she was nude like that. I suppose that was a testimony for her eroticism. Besides, I usually had work around the house and naked gonads are not the preferred manner in which to get most chores complete.

Heidi and I had begun to spend more time together when we were both free and she took a liking to the primitive Shaker atmosphere I had developed on the property along with the natural setting away from the village. She still went back and forth between the village and my place but we had become comfortable with her out here with me.

I told her about Kari's letter shortly after I read it. She had sensed something was troubling me in any event so I told her my feelings and what I thought about it.

"Bartholomew, why don't you fly down there and just sit down and talk it out. It sounds to me like she is having trouble moving on and doesn't want to. How do you feel about that?"

The pregnant pause caused her to continue.

"You see, my young lover, you don't know if you want to move on from it either. There might still be something there and until you sit down face to face with your wife you won't get those feeling resolved; and she is your wife until the two of you finalize an end, if there is one.

"Now, I want you to understand something. You and I are good, no matter what. What we have here is more than I ever expected and I'm comfortable with it. I could go with this for the rest of my days and not feel like I'm lacking anything. My old prick is on another planet somewhere and the only time I'll have to deal with him is if he ever goes to our daughter's marriage, if there is one.

"You on the other hand have a wife who regrets what she did and I think, from the letter at least, still loves you and I know you still have a love for her. Get that resolved, baby; it will be the best thing for you!"

She was right as usual even if she still screwed my brains out right after that talk.

I booked the flight a couple weeks later and flew out of Bangor to Charleston and arrived late in the afternoon on a Friday. After checking in at the Doubletree near the airport, I grabbed a bite at the Daniel Island Grill and washed it down with a cold beer and as I sat there I fiddled with my phone, unsure of myself. Instead of calling I drove to the old condo and pulled into the Medical Practices building across the street from her condo unit.

The balcony on her unit faced toward the Ravenel Bridge into Charleston with the parking lot of the Med building in the foreground. From where I was parked I could clearly see what used to be my patio balcony and standing together on it were two people, a couple; one of them Kari and the other a man obviously intimate.

My immediate reaction was jealousy, pain and then I realized what a hypocrite I was. I had Heidi and regularly at that; for that matter I had fucked her just the previous evening before I departed. I don't know what I had been thinking flying down here unannounced. She might love me and have trouble moving on but she didn't need to be relegated to the life of a spinster.

Watching the two of them on the balcony I almost left but that tinge of jealousy probably spurred my next move as I dialed her cell number. As the phone rang, Kari turned from the man she was with and walked back inside.

"Hello." She answered. I only paused for a moment before she said 'hello' again.

"Hello, Kari."

"David? Oh my God, is that really you? I'm so glad you called me."

"Kari, listen, I received your letter but I just kept off writing a reply and thought I'd call you. Maybe we could meet for a coffee or a drink or something?"

"Oh my God, I've been praying for the opportunity to talk to you for so long. Where are you? Are you in Charleston?"

"Yes, I flew in this afternoon and got a room out near the airport. Are you free this evening?"

I was playing dirty, I know, but I had a need to ask. The man had her in his arms and I had to know what level on the board my peg fit into. She paused for a moment before replying.

"Oh no, David, I can't tonight."

"That's OK, maybe we can hook up sometime tomorrow then." I replied.

"Yes, that would be great. My parents are over here now and I know you don't want to deal with Daddy. Could you come over here around 10?"

I stood outside my car looking up at the balcony watching Kari walk back out and slip into the man's arms, still on the phone with me. Maybe it was the moment or the timing but for whatever reason I thought that was the funniest damn thing and I burst out laughing. I felt the greatest relief and must have made enough noise in the still air to have caught the attention of the couple on the balcony.

Kari and the man stared down at me, perhaps without recognition but when I replied the stark realization was evident.

"Kari, let's skip coffee. Please mail me the papers when your divorce goes through. Thanks."

I disconnected the call, looked up at the couple and waved before climbing inside and slowly drove off. I heard her yelling out my name, imploring, no, begging me to wait but at that point I just wanted to get back to my home, Winter Harbor 1,300 miles away.

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I watched the tiny chirping mouths peek out from the mud and straw nests perched glued to one of the cross members supporting the massive roof of the barn. The mother swallow was certainly not far away but for the moment she allowed me to peer in on her small brood. There were four of them with oversized beaks snapping away in anticipation of some concoction of regurgitated worm as I sat there for a few moments in my rest.

"You know if you keep hanging out up there like a damn orangutan you'll break your neck someday." She yelled up at me.

She was dressed in a thong and a sports bra and had just finished three sets of power reps on her way to swim Birch Harbor with a friend. It is a difficult swim for a novice but this lady could slice her lithe form through any of the currents and waves the harbor had to offer. She had been doing it for the last two years after I coached her on form and effectiveness.

I dropped to the floor and watched her sashay through the garden even glancing over her shoulder to see if I was watching. She knew damn well I was.

When I returned to the house, my swimming pupil was off to her conquest and I fixed a cup of tea to enjoy while I pondered the next writing assignment.

"Mr. Bartholomew Higgins, have you been fitted for your Tux yet?" Heidi Dyer Meissner and soon to be Follansbee yelled out from upstairs.

"I thought you wanted a nude wedding." I replied.

"I think the visuals would be too much for any future grandchildren to see, don't you think?"

She had me there even though I didn't know of any grandchildren who might actually gaze upon such a scene. Of course Gail might have different ideas and that requires an explanation.

When I returned from Charleston a couple years ago, I did so with a remarkably fresh perspective on life. My hair was down to my shoulders. I was living off the land, well, 75% of it anyways and I had a nudist lover who paints in my garden. I write for a living, I have internet groupies that offer me everything from weed to ass from here to Poland, seriously. I live in an old 19th century white farmhouse that I heat mostly with wood in the winter and I cook some meals on a woodstove out back. I'm just radically different from the man I was when I cowardly left Charleston several years earlier.

It was that realization and freedom that allowed me to let go of the façade of love that I had continued to erect around the reality of whatever relationship I had in my first marriage. The peg fit into the second or third tier of the game board and what I needed was first string and I could only find that in Winter Harbor with Charleston, Kari, her fucking parents, her new man or men and that god damn condo left behind like a bad taste washed down the drain.

I guess that's a picture of happiness in my book and I flew back to an abode called Joy. But, then, life plays some weird tricks on you at times, not all bad. Heidi and I had a great relationship and we both knew it was FWB, really good FWB. We both knew that someday the right person was going to come along and we would park our intimacy in favor of being the best of friends and she had become my best friend, just not my wife.